


hold my hand, not the world

by luladannys



Category: Now You See Me (Movies)
Genre: Danny & Lula are siblings, F/M, Gen, slight AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-07-22 20:49:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7453507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luladannys/pseuds/luladannys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Well, our mom literally knifed our dad in the neck, so you actually are a lot like our family," Lula said, turning to Danny. "Isn't that right, big brother?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. you & me

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen NYSM2 three times already and I am obsessed with the idea of Danny & Lula being siblings, so I am telling their story through time jumps.

_1991_

Danny pushed the peas on his plate around with his fork, but not because he was a picky eater. The atmosphere at the dinner table was all too familiar and his appetite had vanished.

His little sister, however, paid no mind to the empty seat at the table or the tense look on their mother’s face or the fact that she had already finished one glass of wine but had yet to touch her plate. Danny wished Lula would eat faster for once so they could go to their room. With every minute that passed, the knot in his stomach twisted tighter.

“Mommy, I need more cut,” Lula said, lifting up her plate with the piece of chicken that she was too young to cut for herself.

But their mother was staring at the door with an empty expression on her face, the only sign of life in her being the finger tapping against her empty wine glass. One of them could have started choking and she probably wouldn’t have noticed.

“ _M-ommm-myyy_.”

She turned her head towards her daughter, but the eyes were still vacant for a moment before she registered what was going on around her.

“You need more already, sweetie?” she cooed, seemingly back to herself. “You ate the first half so fast.”

No, she hadn’t, but Lula smiled broadly in acceptance of the praise anyway. When her big green eyes landed on Danny, he couldn’t even muster a grin back at her.

Their mother rose from her seat and came around to the side of Lula to cut the chicken for her. She was being much too rough with it, causing the plate to slide around Lula’s plastic _101 Dalmatians_ placemat.

The doorknob turned and the fork scraped loudly across the plate, causing Lula to slap her hands over her ears. The offending sound was quickly forgotten, however, when their father walked through the door.

“Daddy!”

In a blur, she was across the room and latching onto his legs. Danny didn’t make any attempt at a greeting. He just looked between his mother with her hand on her hip and his father, who was very pointedly paying attention to Lula to avoid looking at his wife.

Their father theatrically groaned as he lifted Lula onto his hip.

“You’re getting real heavy, little girl. Is there any dinner left for me at all? Or is it all in this tummy of yours?”

He tickled her stomach and she howled with laughter. After carrying her back to her seat at the table, he leaned over and ruffled Danny’s dark curly hair, but Danny still didn’t say anything. Their mother had silently walked into the kitchen to fetch their father’s plate from the oven. She dropped it unceremoniously in front of him, half his serving of peas bouncing off of the plate and onto the table, and continued her forceful cutting of Lula’s chicken.

“How nice of you to join us, James.”

“Don’t start with that shit.”

Danny saw Lula swallow nervously. She was finally catching on that this evening wasn’t going to go well. He should have gotten her out of the room right then, but, hey, he probably wouldn’t have become _the_ J. Daniel Atlas without a lifetime of regrets, right?

“What excuse do you have this time?”

Their father slammed his hand on the table, causing Lula to jump in her booster seat.

“Goddamnit, Kate, I said _don’t_. What does it fucking matter? I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“Don’t raise your voice to me in front of the kids!” she replied, her voice going even louder than his had been.

“I wouldn’t have to if I wasn’t always being interrogated in my own goddamn house!”

Danny jumped up from his seat to take Lula into their room, but their father quickly ordered him to sit back down and he was too young, too scared to not do what he was told. Lula looked down at her plate. Her chicken had ended up more shredded than cut by their mother’s careless work with it.

“Thank you, Mommy,” she said softly.

She was smart, always trying to defuse situations before they got any worse. Sometimes it worked. But sometimes even her sweetness couldn’t get them to act like civilized human beings.

Their mother stroked back Lula’s dark hair affectionately and then turned back to her own seat. It had nearly worked, but their father decided to mutter something under his breath and she whipped back around.

“What did you say?” she demanded.

“Can you just shut up and let me eat my dinner?”

“ _FUCK YOU!_ ”

Their father leaped up from the table, shoving it backwards in the process and causing Lula’s plastic cup of juice to fall over and spill across the pale yellow tablecloth. She had one of them on either side of her and she was gripping the sides of her booster seat so hard her little knuckles were white.

“You wouldn’t have _shit_ without me, so stop acting like you’re anything fucking special.”

The next few seconds all blurred together for Danny. Their mother spat and their father swung and then there was the unmistakable sound of skin being punctured.

Their mother started screaming, hands flying up to her face, and the knife that had been in her hand fell from their father’s neck and onto Lula’s plate.

“Lu, come here!” Danny yelled in a panic, but she was just staring at the bloodied knife laying in front of her. “Lula!”

Still nothing. She wasn’t crying or shaking. Her innocent eyes were simply glued to the red mixing in with her dinner. Above her, their mother was shrieking while their father spewed every swear word imaginable with his hand clasped over his neck, blood trickling out from between his fingers.

“ _Tallulah!_ ”

Finally, she looked up, as though Danny had broken some trance she had been under. She slipped under the table to her big brother, who picked her up and hurried them into their room. Lula sat silently on his bed while he pushed his toy chest against the door to barricade them from the scene going on in the other room.

Then he heard a hiccup.

“D-Da-an-ny.”

Her eyes were welled up and a fat tear fell out of both of them, moving quickly down her pink cheeks. Danny was sitting next to her by the time the first sob came out. She moved onto his lap and he hugged her, silent tears falling down his own face while he tried to calm Lula down. He just hoped that one of the neighbors would call for help after hearing the commotion because the family phone was outside the safety of their room.

After what felt like forever, but was really only a few minutes, there was the sound of sirens getting closer and closer. There was loud banging on the front door, followed by a _bam_ , which had to have been someone forcing the door open, and Lula jumped a little in Danny’s embrace.

Several voices were yelling, so it was hard to make out what they were saying. The hysterical screeches of their mother soon faded away and then someone knocked on the door of Danny and Lula’s room. Lula clutched onto his shirt tightly, looking up at him with terror.

“It’s okay, Lu. It’s okay now.”

He coaxed her off of him and moved the toy chest back enough to crack open the door, revealing a police officer who squatted down to see him and Lula, who was nervously standing a little ways behind Danny.

“My name is Officer Reyes. Are either of you hurt?”

Danny shook his head.

“Okay. I would like to talk to the two of you for a few minutes, then. I’m just going to ask you some questions.”

Danny opened the door some more so that Officer Reyes could come in.

“She didn’t mean to!” Lula instantly exclaimed, grabbing her brother’s arm and tugging on it. “Right, Danny? She didn’t mean it, right? Tell him!”

He couldn’t bring himself to tell agree with her. It had all happened so fast that he hadn’t really seen it. Of course he didn’t want to believe that their mother had done it on purpose, but Danny knew that their parents’ fights often ended in at least one of them being hurt, so he didn’t know if she had meant to or not.

Officer Reyes sat them down and had them tell him what happened at dinner. Danny had to give the details because all Lula kept saying was that it was an accident.

They were told they needed to go with Officer Reyes and Lula put up a fight, crying so hard that her protests about leaving home were barely able to be understood.

“Lu, it won’t be forever. I’ll be with you and it’ll be okay,” Danny told her and her cries subsided into blubbery hiccups.

They put on their shoes, then he got her to put on her coat just in case, and he held her hand as they followed the officer out. Lula paused as they went through the living room, looking back to see the other officers that were taking pictures of their dinner table, and Danny urged her on. Once they got out the front door to the landing of their apartment complex, he saw that lots of their neighbors were standing outside their doors or peeking through their windows to see what was going on. Lula’s fingers squeezed his tighter when she saw them all.

“Don’t worry about them. Don’t even look at them. It’s just you and me.”

He didn’t look at them either as they went down the stairs, keeping his eyes downward as he watched Lula’s footing to make sure she didn’t trip.

Although Danny wasn’t sure about a lot of things that night, like what would happen to their parents or when they would be able to go home again, he knew one thing for sure. It was just the two of them. Just him and his little sister. And they would be okay.

 

_2015_

The smartest guy in the room. That was what he was supposed to be. But now there was a knife to his little sister’s throat and he was nine years old all over again.

The others were all yelling at him, but their voices sounded far away and muddled. The rapid thumping of his heart echoed through his ears. Years ago, Lula had made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that she didn’t need him to take care of her anymore. This was not that same Lula, though. As Danny stared at her, too petrified to do anything else, he saw the little girl sitting in her booster seat at the dinner table watching as her parents yelled at each other over her head.

“Danny…”

Her voice was soft and calm, despite the fear in her eyes and the panic of Jack, Dylan, and Merritt.

“Danny, it’s okay.”

All these years later and she was the one comforting him. Five-year-old Lula blurred and the real one came into focus. Her chin was pointed upwards to give her pale neck as much space as possible from the knife pointed at it. She bore into him with those green eyes that had never faded despite all that they had been through in life.

Danny finally found control over his body again and fumbled in his pocket until he found the stick and passed it over to Mabry. Lula’s body slacked in relief as the knife was put away, but the others were still yelling at him.

“What the hell, Atlas?” Jack demanded. “That’s your _sister_!”

“Not to mention _a Horseman_ , you dick!” Lula threw at Danny, slipping right back into their plan.

They didn’t have the time to risk for Danny to be stumbling like this. If he wanted to prove himself worthy to the Eye, not to mention get all of the others out of this in one piece, he needed to follow her lead. 

* * *

The first toll from Big Ben that welcomed the new year rolled through them, amplifying the electricity already coursing through their veins after revealing their second takedown of Arthur Tressler. Danny wasn’t surprised when he looked over and saw his sister and Jack locked in a kiss. He wasn’t necessarily unhappy about it, having known Jack for two years now and liking him much more than any of the previous men in Lula’s life, but that didn’t mean he liked to see it.

Dylan’s hand landed on his back and urged him forward towards the two, Merritt meeting them from the other side. All five joined in an embrace as the crowd surrounding the Thames cheered for them and for the new year. It really was a new start – not only for the Horsemen, who had finally learned to work as a single organism, but also for a brother and sister whose relationship had been frayed for quite some time.

The sirens of the police boats were fast approaching. Dylan ushered them off the wing of the plane and towards their exit point, telling them to go ahead and that he would catch up. As they ran, Danny felt a hand slip into his.

“It’s not just you and me anymore,” Lula smiled.

Merritt jogged past them to where Jack had stopped to wait a little further ahead.

"Come on, guys, let's go!" the sleight called out.

Lula squeezed his hand and then let it go so they could catch up with the others. Like all those years ago, they were walking away from a crowd with no idea what would happen to them next, only this time Danny wasn’t worried because he and Lula weren’t alone.


	2. embarrassment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the awesome comments on the first chapter! :)

_2007_

“Lula, what the hell were you thinking?”

She rolled her eyes and left her phone sandwiched between her shoulder and her ear as she worked on pulling her laundry out of the dryer and folding it.

“God, Danny, you’re acting like I did porn or something,” she replied, catching the elderly woman at the dryer two down from hers give her a dirty look. “It’ll be good promotion for me.”

“Oh, really? Is that what your skeevy agent told you?”

“Paul isn’t skee-”

“The man is probably close to three times your age and he has you playing frat houses and D-list celebrities’ birthday parties. I saw that thing you did with your eye at UCLA last week. And now this? You pulled _a hat_ out of _a rabbit_ , Lula. That’s not magic, that’s demented.”

At this point, she was just angrily balling up her clothes and throwing them back into the plastic basket she had carried to the laundromat that morning.

“At least I’m doing something unique. Which card trick did you use to get somebody into bed last night?”

He was silent for a beat, then said, “I’m not going to talk to you right now if you’re going to insist on being childish.”

“ _Childish?_ You’re only four years older than me, you asshole. It’s not my fault you take yourself so seriously.”

“ _You_ should be taking yourself more seriously. Just because you’re a magician doesn’t mean you have to be gimmicky. It’s embarrassing…to the whole magic community, really.”

Lula pursed her lips, willing the tingling on the tip of her nose and behind her eyes to stop. Her brother had never supported her decision to do magic. That was why she had gone to LA to pursue it, to get out from under Danny’s patronizing glare in New York City, but he still watched her like a hawk and felt the need to call her to express how displeased he was.

She swallowed the lump forming in her throat and said, “Well, it’s a good thing no one knows that I’m your sister, then. And this embarrassment to magic has a show to do this afternoon, so I’ve got to go.”

She slammed her phone shut and threw it down onto the dryer, where it slid and fell in the little crack between the machine and the one next to it.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” she sighed. “Thanks, Danny.”

She laid on the dusty linoleum floor for a good five minutes trying to squeeze her arm far enough back into the small space, wishing that she actually could remove the limb like she led people to believe on stage, before someone took pity on her and handed her a wire hanger to fish the small silver phone out with. When she finally got it, letting out a tired huff as she pushed herself back up off the floor, it started ringing.

It was Paul, her agent. Lula’s nose crinkled up as she stared at the name. He _did_ creep her out, but the only reason she hadn’t fired him yet was because that was what Danny wanted her to do.

“Hello?” she answered, hoisting her basket onto her hip and exiting the laundromat.

“Lov-e-ly Lula,” Paul purred down the line and for a moment she thought she would have to use the laundry basket to catch her breakfast. “We’re nearly done setting up. Where’s my little magic girl?”

“I’m on my way. And stop calling me that.”

Lula closed the phone quickly before she added “you prick” to the end of her sentence.

* * *

Her show was on the beach and a couple hundred spring breakers, already drunk despite it only being two in the afternoon, were crowded around the stage to watch her. It was the largest live crowd she had ever performed to ( _yet_ , she told herself, largest crowd _yet_ ) and, knowing that they were really only there for the pop punk band that would be taking the stage later on, she was determined to make sure every single one of them remembered the name Lula.

A good portion of the audience was filming her and she knew that Danny would see it because, despite how much he liked to claim that he had a life of his own and didn’t have the time to spend on keeping tabs on her, there were always comments on the videos of her performances that were clearly his, no matter how hard he tried to make it seem like someone else had written them. So she sprayed more “blood” than usual on the first few rows of the crowd when she severed her wrist while trying to juggle hatchets and put even more drama into her reaction.

If she couldn’t make her big brother proud, then she was going to piss him off.


	3. tell me something i don't know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally a little bit of actual Lula/Jack :)

_1999_

Danny looked around as he reached the corner of the schoolyard where Lula was usually waiting for him. She was nowhere to be seen, so he kept walking towards the main building to look for her.

As the middle schoolers went past him on their way off campus, he caught snippets of their conversations, which all seemed to be about the same thing, and it didn’t take long to put together where exactly he would find his younger sister.

Sure enough, as soon as Danny walked into the main office he saw her sitting in a chair outside the principal’s door. Her arms were folded over her chest as she gazed down at the floor.

“Can I help you?” the secretary asked.

“Uh, yeah, that’s my sister.”

Lula looked up at him then, fidgeting to sit a little bit taller in her seat.

The secretary pointed at Lula with the pen in her hand. “Well, your sister caused one heck of a commotion today. We’ve been trying to call your guardian for a few hours now and no one’s picked up.”

Lula watched as Danny leaned over the counter a bit and said something to the secretary in a hushed tone. The woman looked scrutinizingly between the two siblings before walking into the principal’s office for a moment.

“You two can go in,” she announced and held the door open for them.

Danny and Lula each took a seat at the principal’s desk while Mr. Arnold, who should have accepted years ago that God did not want him to have hair, stared at them with his hands folded on his desk.

“Miss Tallulah, would you care to explain to your brother why you are here today?”

She toyed with the zipper of her jacket, looking down as she mumbled, “I pulled a prank in science class.”

“A ‘prank’ which sent several students to the nurse’s office.”

Mr. Arnold opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a plastic bag which held a severed plastic finger and a packet of fake blood. Danny fought the urge to sigh. He knew he never should have let Lula start going to the magic shop with him.

“Tallulah made it seem as though she had an accident during her science lab today in which she lost a finger. Her classmates were traumatized, some even being made sick by it. Not to mention, her teacher is sixty-five years old and easily could have been triggered to have a heart attack. This was a very serious ‘prank’ as your sister likes to call it. I really need to have a sit-down with your guardian – your grandmother, correct?”

From the corner of his eye, Danny saw Lula’s mouth twitch and he knew she was holding back a comment about how it wasn’t her fault her teacher was so old.

He scooted forward in his seat. “You see, Mr. Arnold, our grandmother is very sick. We actually need to be home soon to help her with her medicine. And I think…I think my sister’s behavior may be some sort of response to our concern for our grandmother’s health.”

The principal looked at Danny’s somber face and then at Lula, who was still just staring at her own lap. After a moment, he sighed.

“I will be lenient, given the circumstances. Tallulah, you will be in in-house suspension for the next three days. If I have to see you in here again, though, I will be forced to have to bring in your grandmother.”

“Thank you, Mr. Arnold,” Danny said quickly as he stood up, hurrying to get them out of there before the principal changed his mind. “Come on, Lu, we need to get home.”

* * *

When they were a block away from the school, Lula asked, “How long do you think we can get away with telling people that Grandma is sick?”

Danny shrugged, hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Until someone cares enough to check into it. So…probably forever.”

They walked silently for another few minutes.

“Danny…um…thanks. For getting me out of that.”

Danny looked down at her with a slightly raised eyebrow. She hadn’t been too amicable towards him lately, but he had chalked it up to puberty. She had been irritable and more stubborn than usual, keeping herself cooped up in her room with the radio on too loud. Their grandmother, who was perfectly healthy, had told Danny not to worry about it, but he couldn’t help it. He never could.

“You’re welcome. You _can_ stay out of trouble for the rest of the school year, right? It’s only like two more months.”

Lula nodded.

“So, why’d you do it?”

She brushed one side of her hair back behind her ear. “There was this boy – Ian – and I wanted him to ask me to the eighth grade dance, but I didn’t know how to talk to him, so I thought maybe he would think that the finger thing was cool and that then he would like me.”

“And, uh, did he? Think it was cool?” Danny asked, putting aside the uncomfortableness he felt talking about his little sister’s crushes because he was glad that she was, at least for the moment, talking to him again.

“Probably not. He passed out.”

Danny couldn’t stop himself from laughing and Lula playfully shoved him.

“I’m sorry, Lu. That sucks,” he said, unlocking the front door of their house.

She shook her head. “No, it’s okay. At least now I know he’s a wuss. I don’t need guys in my life who can’t handle a chopped-off finger.”

She strode past him, making a beeline for the kitchen, and Danny found himself feeling slightly more concerned for the male population than he did for her.

 

_2016_

Lula looked over her shoulder as she rounded the corner, taking in the scene that she had left behind in front of a hotel. Her distraction had emptied most of the lobby as they crowded around the battered body double left in the street.

Understandably, neither her brother nor her boyfriend had volunteered to be the one to run Lula over and Merritt was needed to hypnotize a member of the housekeeping staff to let them into the room of their latest target, so Li had offered to help (a bit too excitedly for Danny and Jack’s liking). They had practiced for weeks – the precise speed and movements necessary to make the switch between Lula and the dummy – and they did a pretty damn good job, if Lula said so herself.

As she turned her head back, all she saw was a blur coming towards her. A body slammed into her, arms wrapping around her waist to lift and spin her. When her feet touched the ground again, familiar lips found hers and she felt like she was still up in the air. Her arms went around Jack’s neck, fingers toying with his hair.

Finally, he pulled back, still holding onto her waist, and Lula’s eyes opened to meet his staring affectionately at her.

“You’re incredible,” Jack said breathlessly.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she replied cockily, but the warmth blossoming in her cheeks was betraying her.

He smiled dopily. “I’m in awe of you.”

“Eh, I knew that, too.”

“I love you.”

Lula felt the playfully smug grin slide off of her face. She wasn’t sure what emotion she was giving off, but Jack’s expression went from one of adorable, goofy bashfulness to concern.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. You don’t have to say anyth-”

He was silenced by Lula’s lips capturing his. When Danny and Merritt eventually met up with them, they had to yell at the pair twice before they separated.


	4. henley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (So I actually posted this yesterday but ao3 was being weird and didn't move it up the list so I decided to repost it.)
> 
> This is my first time writing Henley and I was really nervous about it so any feedback on her character would be really appreciated. :)

_2011_

Henley knocked on the door with her elbow, both hands occupied by the paper bag, cup carrier, and her excessive purchases from the arts and crafts store. She tapped her foot impatiently at the shuffling on the other side. Finally, the door opened to reveal a groggy Daniel Atlas still in his suit pants from their show the night before, paired with a wrinkled gray t-shirt. His curly hair was flattened on one side. Henley’s head tilted a little as she grinned at the unusual and endearing sight. Few were the people who got to see this master of illusion’s true form.

“Good morning,” she greeted in a singsong voice, purposefully wafting around the scent of the coffee she had brought as she walked past him into his apartment.

He followed her like a stray puppy, his argyle socks padding across the wood floor. Henley was already spouting off ideas for tricks and stage designs while smearing strawberry cream cheese onto her bagel, wasting no time getting to the point of her visit. Danny was trying to keep up, but he had had a long night and Henley was inhumanly chipper in the mornings as it was.

“- and then – _voila!_ – I’m sitting in the audience. So the trap door would have to –”

Her voice abruptly cut off as her eyes caught sight of a pale, slender hand hanging off the side of Danny’s bed. She abandoned her breakfast, only grabbing the crafting supplies as she made for the door again.

“What? Henley?” Danny asked, having been too out of it to follow what she had been looking at.

“For God’s sake, Danny, _I told you_ I wasn’t going to work here when you have girls over!”

She marched out, slamming the door behind her, and Danny quickly glanced over at the bed across the loft to see nothing more than a finger twitch at the sound. His feet were moving before his brain really registered it, following Henley back into the hall. He couldn’t quite put his finger on _why_ , but it was important that she knew that he actually had listened to her when she expressed her displeasure at having his overnight guests still lingering around when she came over to work on ideas for their show.

“Henley!” he called, leaning over the railing of the stairs. She was already nearly two floors down.

She didn’t even look up at him, just kept going down the rectangular stairwell with her red hair bouncing behind her.

“Henley! That’s my sister!”

Her head whipped up. “You don’t have a sister!”

“Yes…I do.”

Henley stared at him for a moment, then turned around and started back up the stairs, somehow looking even madder than she had been on the way down. Danny found himself taking a step backwards away from her when she reached the top again.

“Are you telling me that we have been working together for _six months_ and that you never told me that you have a sister?”

“I don’t see why you’re acting like it’s such a big deal.”

She threw her arms out at her sides. “I spend more time with you than I do with anyone else and I assume that the same goes for you, so it _is_ a big deal that you never told me that. I know you don’t see me as your partner or your equal, but you can’t even tell me something about your family? I don’t deserve to know that?”

“Fine, you want to know about her? Her name is Lula and she’s four years younger than me and she lives in California. At least, I think she still does. I hadn’t heard from her in a while, but she called me last night from a payphone in Brooklyn wasted and lost, so I had to track her down and bring her here. I don’t even know why she’s in New York or how long she’s been here for.”

He was trying to maintain the usual composure and self-righteousness he had in arguments, but there were cracks. Henley could see the concern in the unruliness of his hair and the dark spots under his eyes. She hadn’t even thought that J. Daniel Atlas was capable of worrying, let alone caring, about someone other than himself.

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah,” Danny answered, one hand scratching the back of his head while the other rested in the pocket of his pants. “She’s just sleeping it off.”

“Well, I can still go if you need to take care of h-”

“No, it’s fine.” (Danny would never acknowledge just how quickly he had said that and Henley decided not to use it against him.) “She’s a hard sleeper, even when she’s not drunk. We need to finish working out the sword box.”

“ _The sword box_ ,” Henley repeated dramatically as they walked back to his apartment. “That’s so unoriginal.”

* * *

Lula groaned and pushed herself up. She ran her hands over her face, trying to straighten out the fuzziness in her brain. The Houdini poster on the wall reminded her where she was. Lula sighed and closed her eyes, rubbing the butts of her hands into them as she remembered the vomit in the snow and the payphone booth and Danny trying to get information out of her about where she was. There were much worse places she could have woken up after the night that she had had, but, damn, she was still dreading what he was going to say to her – and not just because of the pounding in her head.

“Here,” a voice said and Lula jumped.

“Jesus!” she exclaimed in fright, sending a surge of pain through her own skull.

There was a redheaded woman suddenly sitting on the foot of the bed, holding out a glass of water and two aspirins.

“Who are you?” Lula asked as she gratefully took them.

“Henley Reeves. I’m your brother’s assistant.”

“Oh, right,” Lula said, pausing for a moment as she swallowed the pills. “I didn’t recognize you without the sequins.”

Henley smirked. She liked this girl. Something about her seemed familiar, though, and it wasn’t just the little resemblances that were shared with Danny like the shape of her lips and the color of her hair. Henley looked past the smudged eye makeup and pale pallor of a bad hangover and then she saw it.

“I know you! You were in that one magic special and you pulled a hat out of a rabbit!”

Lula groaned and flopped back down onto the bed. “That was _four years ago_.”

“No, I thought that was so cool! I can’t believe I didn’t know that you and Danny are related.”

“I’m sure he would have rather kept it that way. Where is he, anyway?”

“He went to get his mail.”

Henley pulled her legs up onto the bed, with her shoes still on, and scooted up closer to Lula, who was a little weirded-out by how friendly this woman she had just met was. How on Earth did she work _with Danny_?

“You need to tell me things I can use to pick on Danny with.”

It hurt to think, but Lula wracked her brain for her most embarrassing stories about her older brother.

“One time when he was…thirteen, I think…he burnt one of his eyebrows off practicing a trick.”

Henley gasped, hand flying to her mouth. “No!”

“And it was right before school picture day, so our grandma drew it on with lip liner, which looked even worse than just the bare skin.”

Henley laughed so hard she had to swipe a finger beneath her eyes to get rid of the tears that formed.

“ _Please_ tell me you have a copy of it somewhere.”

“Well, of course. What kind of little sister would I be if I didn’t? I’ll get it to you.”

Danny walked back in just then, to see his sister and his assistant next to each other – Henley trying to stifle her laughter and Lula smiling despite the headache he knew she had to be feeling.

He pointed between them. “Whatever is happening here, I don’t like it.”


	5. comfort

_1991_

Lula had never not shared a room with her big brother before. Their grandmother was trying to make everything about their new living situation sound as exciting as possible, but, big surprise, it didn’t exactly work on the two kids who had seen their mother stab their father in the neck at the dinner table.

_We can paint it, if you’d like. I’ll make you some curtains. You like purple, don’t you?_

Lula just shrugged. She didn’t want her grandma to paint anything or make anything or to keep telling her how nice it would be to have her own space. She wanted to go back home, where maybe things weren’t always okay but Danny was always right there. Her grandma had to end up unpacking for her because Lula wanted to leave everything in the bags for when she and Danny got to go home again.

The room felt wrong. Her things were there – her bed, her toys, her clothes – but it was all different and she couldn’t sleep. There was just too much space and it was all hers and she was lonely.

But Danny seemed fine with it, so she tried to be, too, even though sometimes she cried to herself at night, arms wrapped deathly tight around her stuffed rabbit. And sometimes, she just couldn’t help it and she carried her pillow and blanket down the hall.

For a few years, Danny would occasionally wake up and find her sleeping on the floor of his room. The last time, or so he thought, had been when she was eight.

* * *

Seven years later, on the morning that Danny was leaving on a bus to New York City, he opened his eyes and saw her curled up next to his packed suitcase. He eased his way out of bed and onto the floor beside her, sitting with his legs crisscrossed.

“Lula,” he said quietly, shaking her shoulder.

She groggily opened her eyes and looked embarrassed when she realized where she was.

“Sorry,” she mumbled immediately and sat up, beginning to gather up the blanket.

“It’s okay, Lu. I…I’m going to miss you, too.”

The air briefly got knocked out of him as she lunged at him, arms flying around his neck. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders, the other one stuck out behind him to keep himself from falling over.

A car pulled up outside and they separated, Lula quickly wiping away a tear in the hopes that he wouldn’t see it. She knew he hated it here, but she didn’t want him to go. They had never been so far apart before.

Danny ducked into his closet and quickly reemerged in jeans, leaving on the shirt that he had slept in. He put on his shoes and slung his backpack across his shoulder. Lula stood up and pulled out the handle of his suitcase for him.

“Knock ‘em dead, big brother.”

He took the suitcase and went outside to the car. From his bedroom window, Lula watched it pull away and disappear down the road. The sun was coming up, signaling the start to what she knew was going to be a very long day which would bleed into long months and long years until she could join him.

Lula closed the blinds and laid back down on Danny’s floor.

 

_2015_

She had been sleeping fitfully, nerves tangling up her insides as she kept rolling back and forth. Their OCTA show, her first appearance as a Horseman, was the next day and the Eye had put them up in a hotel down the street from the event. It wasn’t anything fancy, like the Horsemen used to stay in before they were wanted criminals, but it still made Lula anxious. She was used to her accommodations for shows being a friend of a friend’s couch.

She flipped her pillow over and wrestled with it to try to make it comfier, pausing when she heard the slight creaking of a door. It wasn’t the front door that led into the hallway, though, but the adjoining door that connected her room to Danny’s. Her brother had been quick to grab the key from Dylan that was next to Lula’s, leaving Jack and Merritt with the rooms on the other side of the hall, as though Lula would actually have tried to make a move on Jack the night before the most nerve-wracking event of her life. Yeah, Danny really had _a lot_ of faith in her.

The door opened slowly and she tried to stay as still as possible as an outline in the dark stepped into her room. He left the door open, probably just to not have to deal with the noisy hinges again, and then lowered himself to the floor.

Lula wondered if she should say something, to let him know that she couldn’t sleep either, that she was nervous too. She felt like he knew, though, and Danny had never been the one to do this before so she didn’t want to scare him away with things like talking and feelings, which were his greatest fears.

She listened to him get settled and once he was still, a feeling of comfort came over her and she finally drifted off into a steady sleep.

* * *

Of course, by the time her alarm went off the next morning and she sat up, the floor was empty and the door was shut. A few minutes later there was a text from Dylan saying that they were having breakfast across the hall, so she wandered over.

Dylan nodded to her from the window, where he was peering through the curtain at the auditorium where the OCTA launch was happening while sipping at his coffee. Danny was fiddling with his flippy briefcase thing that he had actually smacked her hand the night before for touching. Merritt was going over his lines for the show with little notecards while Jack watched the morning news on a low volume, undoubtedly at Danny’s request so he could focus.

“Good morning, missy,” Merritt greeted, putting down his cards. “How did our newest Horseman sleep?”

She felt Danny glance over at her and shrugged.

“Perfect,” she lied.

“I didn’t,” Jack admitted bashfully. “I’m so nervous.”

“You aren’t even in the show,” Danny flippantly retorted.

“Guys,” Dylan quickly interjected, in a very do-not-make-me-turn-this-car-around kind of way, before Jack could reply.

The Horsemen fell silent and the others went back to their previous activities while Lula grabbed as much breakfast as she thought she could stomach given the nerves she was trying to hide and sat down next to her brother, giving him a small smile that she in no way expected him to return.

When they were returning to their rooms to get ready, Danny turned to her as they opened their respective doors.

“Hey, Lu?”

It had been so long since he had called her that, given their two years of no communication once he joined the Horsemen and the evident annoyance he felt towards her joining them. She just looked at him, waiting for what he would say next.

“Don’t take too long,” he said quickly and went into his room, shutting the door behind him.

Lula shook her head as she stepped into her room. Danny was an asshole, but he was her asshole, and she was just happy to have him in her life again.


	6. the first time lula met dylan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lula didn't always like the Horsemen (especially Jack).

_2013_

Lula hadn’t heard from her brother in almost three months now – which wasn’t completely unheard of for them, but she couldn’t remember doing anything to make him ignore her this time. Her finger hovered over the call button sometimes, but she always talked herself out of pushing it. If he wouldn’t call her, she wouldn’t call him.

Around the same time the radio silence from Danny had started, Henley had suddenly needed to travel to New York without any real explanation why. She hadn’t been sure how long she would be gone for and had let Lula take over her upcoming shows in L.A. Four days after Henley had left, she sent Lula a text to let her know that she would be staying in New York.

It was odd that the two would go incommunicado at the same time. Lula wondered if they were pent up in some little apartment just having a marathon of the hate-sex that had been brewing between them for two years. Then she tried not to think about that because _ew_.

What was really weird was that the two of them both fell off the magic grid, as well. As the weeks turned into months, Lula’s mild annoyance turned into a constant drift between worried and angry. It didn’t make any sense for both Danny and Henley to quit magic at the same time. They had feelings for each other, that much Lula knew (even though she thought Henley could do much better), but they were not the type to run off together and everything they had made for themselves behind. And if they had, _screw them_. That was there the worry simmered into anger. They were the only two people she really had and now they had both abandoned her with no warning and no explanation. Most importantly – no goodbye.

* * *

Chatter within the magic community started about some show in Manhattan by some group called the Four Horsemen. Imagine Lula’s surprise when she watched the video to see none other than Danny and Henley. So they had ditched her to team up with some washed-up hypnotist and some pretty boy who could throw cards. Cool. Awesome. That definitely didn’t hurt.

The Horsemen’s popularity grew, but Lula refused to watch any more of their videos. She grew resentful to the point where she hated even hearing their name and she heard it a lot because every other magician she knew couldn’t stop talking about them. She hated them all, especially that Jack guy because it turned out he had just been some petty street magician. They had plucked this guy up to join their little magic quartet and _not her_?

Then they got backed by some big-time benefactor and a bunch of people she knew from California were planning a road trip to see their Vegas show. It was just bullshit, all of it. She felt so disposable and no one even knew that Danny was her brother, so they all thought that she was just ridiculously and irrationally jealous that these magicians had made the big time and that she hadn’t.

After the Las Vegas show, it was impossible to avoid talk of the Horsemen. They were on every news channel, so, like the rest of the world, Lula started to follow the story. She tried to get a ticket to their New Orleans show, but it sold out in thirty-five seconds. She watched the live chopper footage, horrified, as the youngest member of the Horsemen, the one she had hated so much because she thought she deserved his place, died in a fiery car wreck. She waited for the inevitable day the authorities would drag her into the whole mess.

She had been expecting it since the bank robbery. They had probably just been a bit too busy chasing the Horsemen and royally embarrassing themselves in front of the entire world to get to her until now, a week after the three remaining Horsemen had leapt off of a rooftop in New York City and vanished into thin air.

They didn’t cuff her, even though it wouldn’t have mattered if they had because she easily would have taken them off (she assumed her brother and the others had taught them that), but they did leave her alone in the interrogation room for over an hour. It was boring and she just wanted to get this over with. She didn’t know anything.

Finally, two of the agents stepped into the room – Cowan and Rhodes. She really hoped they wouldn’t try to pull a good-cop/bad-cop routine on her because they both seemed like pricks.

“You don’t go by Atlas, too?” was the first thing Rhodes asked.

“No, I don’t, and I don’t know anything about the Horsemen, okay?”

Cowan rolled his eyes, clearly not believing her. “And, let me guess, if you did, you wouldn’t tell us?”

“No, actually, I just might,” Lula replied. “Because I am pissed off at my stupid brother.”

She froze for a moment, not believing that she had actually just said that. Yes, she was mad with Danny – and Henley, too – but she knew that despite her feelings there was no way she would ever turn them in if she had the chance. Lula believed in what the Horsemen had done and definitely would have been cheering them on like everyone else if she wasn’t just so goddamn hurt. She didn’t want to reveal her true emotions to the FBI, though.

The interrogation didn’t last very much longer. Lula’s answers became clipped to shroud the pain and anger that had been burning inside her for the last year from the two men who she knew would just use it against her. She noticed that while Cowan kept throwing questions at her to try to trip her up, Agent Rhodes had fallen silent and was just watching her.

After they finally stopped with the questions, there was another forty-five minutes left alone in the room and then they released her. As she was walked out of the building, Agent Rhodes handed her a card with his phone number on it.

“If you receive any information, call me.”

Lula threw the card away when she got home.


	7. the second time lula met dylan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm baaaaack! I have not forgotten about this fic -- my emotions about these two dumb siblings take up way too much of my time for me to ever forget about it. Sorry for the incredibly long delay in updating it. Also, as you may have noticed, I have changed my username on here. I was formerly isnotthatstrange and now I am luladannys (told you they take up all of my time). Thank you to the readers who have stuck around and to the new ones! :)

_2015_

Lula rummaged around in her bag until her hand met the crinkly package of her baby wipes. Ah, the glamorous life of a magician – cleaning fake blood off of herself before lugging her duffel bag full of props to the bus stop. She pulled out the pack of wipes and something fluttered onto the floor. It was a tarot card, by the looks of it, which she never used in her shows, but it didn’t seem that unlikely for one to somehow end up mixed in with her stuff.

“The moon,” she read aloud as she picked it up.

The card featured two wolves howling at the large, silvery moon. Lula turned it over to see a date and address printed on the back under an image of an eye.

It was in New York City. She hadn’t been there in nearly three years, not since Henley had quit being Danny’s assistant and convinced Lula to move back to L.A. with her to take the magic world by storm away from the controlling shadow of J. Daniel Atlas.

She looked up the address to find that it was the same apartment building the FBI had raided to catch (well, try to catch) the Horsemen. This was either some kind of elaborate prank or…or perhaps it was Danny reaching out to her. Maybe even Henley.

The date printed on the card was five days away, enough time to scrape together enough money to get a plane ticket. If she decided to go. Lula wasn’t really sure about this.

Oh, who was she kidding? She was definitely going.

* * *

The door to the apartment was unlocked and the inside looked like it hadn’t been touched in the near year since the Horsemen, except for Jack Wilder, had evaded capture. A fine layer of dust coated every surface, threatening to make Lula sneeze as she crept further into the living room. There was only one open window, providing a small area of light on the floor.

“Hello?” she finally called out.

Behind her, the door, which she had left partially open as a means of escape, shut by itself and Lula felt her heart jump into her throat.

“Danny?” she yelled. “This isn’t funny.”

A bird landed on the ledge of the open window, its head tilted as its little black eyes looked right at her. The pigeon cooed, then flew into the apartment and disappeared down the hall.

“Okay, follow the bird. I am following a bird,” Lula said to herself as she cautiously went the same direction the pigeon had flown.

As she approached the entryway into the kitchen, she saw a table. The bird was pecking at a small pile of seeds in the center of it. Lula took a deep breath and stepped into the room.

“This better be good, Da-”

The man seated at the far end of the table was _not_ Danny.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Lula demanded of the familiar FBI agent.

Rhodes stood, placing his hands casually in his pockets. “I’m here to make you an offer.”

* * *

Lula refused to sit down at first, convinced that this whole meeting was a trap somehow. But then Rhodes told her how he had been the one orchestrating the Horsemen the whole time from within the FBI and she _had_ to sit down after that. He then produced recent photos of her brother that only someone close to him could have gotten and _God, what had he done to his hair?_

“So…what is this offer?” she finally asked after processing everything that had been presented to her.

“The Horsemen will be making a comeback soon and we currently have a vacancy.”

Lula swallowed. “You want me to replace Jack?”

She wasn’t sure if she would be able to do that with a clean conscience. After all, Jack had been the Horseman that she had hated (and envied) the most and then he died in that awful car wreck.

Rhodes scratched at the back of his neck. “Uh, not exactly.”

He presented another photo and this one not only had Danny in it, but Merritt McKinney and Jack Wilder as well.

“NO. _WAY!_ ” Lula exclaimed. “He faked his death?! That is _SO COOL_! But how did he do it? I mean, he was driving the car, wasn’t he? Man, I gotta say, I take back all the bad stuff I thought about this guy. That is fucking _AWESOME_.”

It took a moment and when she turned to Rhodes, he looked like he had been waiting for her realization.

“So, if Jack isn’t dead…where’s the vacancy?”

“Henley. She left a few weeks back.”

Lula rolled her eyes and immediately asked, “Ugh, what did my ass-hat brother do to her now?”

Rhodes shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. “No one’s really sure. She said she just got tired of waiting for the Eye to give them their next assignment, but…you know. She actually recommended you to the Eye as her replacement.”

Lula wondered where Henley was now, why she hadn’t made contact. She couldn’t believe that Henley would give up something like being in the Horsemen out of impatience or boredom. Danny had to have done something utterly stupid and hurtful.

She felt less bad about this proposition than the one where she would have replaced dead-Jack, but…could she really take Henley’s place? Would Danny accept her? Would Merritt and Jack? Would the world?

“You don’t have to make a decision right now,” Rhodes said, seeming to read her apprehensive mind. “But Henley spoke very highly of you. You’ve been on our radar for a long time, Lula, even before Atlas asked us to watch over you. You just weren’t ready yet when we first brought the Horsemen together.”

“Danny asked you to…watch me?” Lula asked softly.

“He didn’t want any of his actions with the Horsemen putting you in danger. The Eye protecting you was actually his number one condition of joining.”

“Really? It wasn’t his name coming first on the marquees?” she quipped, clearly trying to hide whatever emotions she was feeling after finding out her brother had not completely abandoned her.

“Listen, Lula,” Rhodes said, leaning forward in his seat, “I think you would be the perfect fit to fill out the team. Your skills have improved so much in the last few years since we started putting this together. And…as someone with…no family, I’d like to be able to see you and your brother get another chance. I know that he cares a lot about you, whether he wants to admit it or not.”

“Does he know that you’re offering me this?”

“What do you think?”

Lula did not have to give it a second thought before she was nodding, a mischievous smile spreading across her face. Was she appreciative of this opportunity to be closer to Danny? Yes. But she was also looking forward to annoying the shit out of him and embarrassing him in front of the other Horsemen. That was what he got for ignoring her for two years.


End file.
